Is the native provident? or does he live from hand to mouth? Yes and no. I heard a man who traded with the natives say that in one year he bought about 1,000 bags of grain from them, giving in exchange goods from his store. Before the next crop was harvested, he had sold about all the grain back to them, at of course quite an advance in price. I have seen, near our own doors, natives sell to European traders grain, either for money or goods, from $1.25 to $2.50 for a two-hundred-pound bag and buy it back later in the same season for from $6 to $7 per bag. But these are extreme cases. In the latter instance a year of plenty was followed by a year of drought, and the natives were far from markets and at the mercy of local traders. Many of the natives had put in their granaries what would have tided them over an ordinary season, but the prolonged drought led them to want. Others had a comparatively poor crop the previous year and this caused a scarcity. Some did not need to buy at all, as they always look in advance for such emergencies and do not sell their surplus until certain of a new crop. Such natives, when they do sell, often sell to their native neighbors or exchange their grain for cattle. Such are generally very thrifty, while there are always some who are in want. In this too it may be seen that they are not unlike other people. In fact, the Batonga taught their missionaries some lessons in caring for grain. We found that they store their corn in the grain bins without removing all the husks, and they shell it as they need it or near the end of the season. With the Kafir corn they do the same way, cutting off the heads and putting it away without threshing it. This was so different from the thrifty Matabele, who carefully shelled and threshed their grain, that the first time we visited one of the villages and saw their method we thought, "How lazy! We must teach them how to do their work properly." We soon discovered that in this hot climate the shelled corn was soon weevil-eaten, and that the shelled Kafir corn was almost ground to meal before the year ended. Now we are inclined to imitate the natives in this respect rather than they us. It shows too that the native adapts himself to the country and climatic conditions.